The Future of Guitar Learning (And Why Everything Is Changing) - 476

A different kind of episode

0:00Welcome, friends, to the Play Guitar Podcast. I am Lee, and I'm here to help you become the guitar player that you've always wanted to be. Today's going to be a little different. Today's episode is going to be unlike any of the episodes that I've ever recorded before. It's not going to be long. It's not a lesson. So if you're looking for a lesson, this is not it. I need to tell you something. And if you follow me for any length of time, I don't talk about myself a

0:36whole lot. I'd rather spend my time talking about helping you become a guitar player. Today I'm going to change that. I'm going to talk a little bit about the things that I've been working through. I want to tell you why I created something in the Academy. It's called the Academy Training Dojo, and this is not about that. This is about the reason why I didn't. This is not a launch episode. It's already launched. This is the story behind why I believe that you're learning the guitar is

1:10changing. And not because of anything that we did. Technology has changed. It's changing everything quickly. And I think you're starting to see that. This is going to be a ride that we're going on. We're on the ride already. So learning is on a ride too. It's entering a new era. And I don't think I could stay the same and go along with this. I could no longer keep teaching the exact same way I

1:45have because I can tell what's going on. I've been teaching guitar since 1988. That was the first time I taught a lesson. His name was Andy. He asked me to show him what I was doing on the guitar. I went over to his house, taught him a lesson. I said, this is it. I love doing this, right? I love sharing. I've watched guitar education through those years change over and over and over again. And we're in one of those times right now. Started with the private lessons over at the music store. They still do that, right? Books. Remember VHS tapes. Then to DVDs. Bought a bunch of DVDs. Then we went to websites

2:25to learn new things. YouTube. Memberships. Apps. All those things. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And now

Information versus training

2:35we have AI that's helping with this too. Every one of these things went up, but it went up for one thing. It went up for information. It made information easier to access. When I started guitar, there was not any. You had to search high and low for information about playing the guitar. But some things never changed. Over the years, I keep getting asked the same question by guitar players. What should I be

3:08practicing today? I don't know what to practice. I'm doing something. I don't know if it's helping or it's not. I feel like I'm spinning my wheels. I don't feel like I'm getting any better. What should I practice? So since that year, 2018, that I started the podcast, this has been stuck in my mind. I know I'm stubborn. I've worked on things for a long time, right? I keep asking myself with everything that's available today, everything, uh, compared to when I started, it's night and day.

3:43You've got anything you need available to you. Why are we still not doing well? Why are so many guitar players still stuck? This is the premise that I started from in 2018. We've been working towards today. Uh, today we have all those resources, any guitar, all the, all the guitar players that you love, that you listen to, that of these songs that are 30 years old, right? They didn't have any of the stuff that you have right now. What's different? They didn't have millions of

4:14YouTube videos. They didn't have thousands of courses. All of those things can answer almost any question that you have on the guitar. Backing tracks, tabs, we have everything. So why aren't guitar players making more progress? Well, let me tell you something. We're overwhelmed and we're more overwhelmed than we have ever been. I talked about, I think it was 2018 or 19. I talked about drinking water from the fire hose. That's what it felt like there. Well, now it's times a hundred

4:45times a thousand. We have too much. And all of this information coming in has, has, has started something, a chemical thing inside of you of collecting this stuff. Do you collect these things? Do you have a whole, like a whole folder on your computer or, or, or bookmarks and things of, of, of information that you never look at? We're mistaken because of what's been given to us, right? We've mistaken all of this access for getting better, for progress, but you know it and

5:23I know it. That's not really what's going on. Eventually we realized that the problem isn't all this stuff that we're getting because we're not getting anything from it. We've confused this information with training, training and information. Those are not the same thing and we're not getting training. We're getting clicks and we're getting little bits of information and all this looks nice and click over there. What are you going to play today? Well, that thing I saw yesterday was kind of fun. I'll work on that. It's disjointed. It's not how you train. Information just tells you

5:56what to know, but training develops what you can do. You can own 20 courses, hundreds of videos. You can ask AI every guitar question imaginable and you may get an answer. You may get one that's right, but that doesn't get you any closer to being the guitar player that you want to be. Because I know that because you wouldn't be listening to this if you didn't have that dream, right? This information is not becoming progress automatically. Just because you know about something, that doesn't mean you can

6:30do it. And just because you can do something doesn't mean you're doing it well. Okay, we have a lot of that going on. Getting to a certain part of songs, I can do it. I've played it. Next. Not next. Uh-uh. Well, we're not there yet. We've been chasing the wrong thing this whole time. We've been chasing excitement and finding something new is exciting. Acquiring things is exciting. It's chemical in the

7:01brain, but it only lasts for so long. You may be feeling this. I know I'm feeling it. And I know the people that I come into contact with are feeling it. We've reached the limit of what that's going to do. We've reached the limit of what information can do for us. I believe we are right now witnessing the apex of the information age. Things have changed within the last few months.

7:35It's obvious, right? All those things that I've said over and over again in this episode are temporary, right? But the greatest feeling on the guitar isn't those things. It's not the starting something new over and over and over again. It's realizing I can do something today that I wasn't able to do before. Last week, I couldn't play this and now I can. That's development. And now I got to go, well, where do I go to the next step? Where do I go to the next step? It makes sense. It's common sense.

8:10We see it all the time. Well, we want to get better. This is what you do to get better. But you're left on your own to do it. Think about martial arts. Think about going to the gym. You have trainers. You have programs. I can do something today that I couldn't do last week. That's a huge statement. It's real progress. That feeling is what I've been chasing. This is the

The Academy Training Dojo

8:37feeling that I want you to start chasing. I created something in the academy. I actually changed it completely. When you log into what was a membership site, it doesn't look anything like it anymore. It's ready for you to sit down with your guitar and start practicing the moment you log on. It's called the Academy Training Dojo. I chose that name for a reason. Not because it needs to be a membership. That's not what I'm looking for. I didn't want another product. I've got two.

9:15The toolkits, they're not going anywhere. That gives you the basic information you need. The mastery courses give you the follow-up information, things to get you in that area. They're not going anywhere. The toolkits teach you guitar. The mastery courses teach you guitar. But the dojo develops you as a guitar. We got to remember this is different. Very different. The courses are important. They're resources. They teach. But resources are not

9:45training. I think that training is what all of these people that you see on a daily basis in the next five years are going to be switching over to that. I'm kind of alone right now. And I may be wrong. I don't know. But this is where my dollar sits, right? It's where you stop wondering what I should practice because of all the information. It's where every Monday in the dojo, you get a fresh start. You get a new week of lessons every Monday. You don't have a backlog of lessons. You don't have,

10:19oh gosh, I missed last week. I need to finish that so I can get, uh-oh. No, we're all practicing together. If you miss a week, no big deal. This is development. This isn't the information. You didn't miss any information. This is consistent progress. One lesson is not any more important than the other one. What's important is you going through it over and over and over again. The consistent progress becomes the goal instead of you collecting more information. Let's talk about

10:52AI. AI is changing everything. And I don't think we've seen where it's going yet because it's moving fast. But it's not what I'm competing against. I'm not worried about AI. AI is a fantastic tool. It's not my competition. All the information that's out there, that's not my competition. What I'm against is confusion. We have plenty of that. What I'm against is inconsistent practice.

11:23What I'm against is not knowing what to do next. This information is moving fast, faster than you realize. And I think it's very exciting. It's going to make information just like anything, just like turning on the water. Right. But, but here's what I don't think it changes. It doesn't make you a better guitar player at all. When I went to university of the arts, I was a jazz guitar major and I was there with other

11:55jazz guitar players. And I felt very comfortable with my guitar playing, but I wasn't listening to jazz. I was going to my lessons and I would learn all the jazz things. I could see those really good jazz guitar players and I knew everything they were doing. I learned it in school, but I wasn't listening to jazz. I wasn't playing jazz on the weekends. I wasn't developed in jazz. I had the information. I know what they're doing. And I actually took that information and used it in other

12:29styles of music that I did listen to. But as far as being a jazz guitar player, that was not the thing I did the best. Okay. I needed to develop that. Becoming a better guitar player still requires development. It still requires practice. It still requires showing up. And AI can't do that for you. You've got to do that. And you need to be led if you want to do it quickly, not waste time. Right. Information is becoming abundant. It's a good thing, but development is becoming more valuable by the

13:05minute. And that's where guitar education is going. Some people are going to hear this and you're going to think, well, that's okay. I don't really need this. Uh, and other people are going to hear this and they're going to think something bigger. They're thinking, this is what I've been wanting all this time. I know I'm thinking that I'm thinking, I wish I had this years ago. There's a couple of things that I'm teaching in, in this that I worked out on my own because no one could show me how to do it. And there's one thing in particular that I, that I share that took me five years to develop

13:40and it made me feel comfortable as a professional guitar player where I'm teaching it to my students in a few months. It's a big deal. Uh, you're going to hear people that they're going to hear, I'm trying to change things, right? Trying to change the way guitar players think about learning. Well, that's true. I've been trying to do this for a long time. I've been building towards this since 2018. It's not a new idea for me, but it's, it's the time is happening. Things are kind of,

14:11the crossroads are kind of coming ahead. I can see where it's going, seeing where technology is going, seeing the things that I've built up to this time. And it's, it's, it's our time. I've been waiting

The future of guitar learning

14:22to say this. I believe the future of guitar playing is not bigger libraries. It's not more courses. It is development. It's training. It's time for us to get going. It's time for us to get moving, right? I don't know where you are. You could be driving a truck. You could be on the subway going into the city to work. You could be riding a bike. You could be at the gym. You could be practicing. You could be sitting down with a guitar and listening to this while you practice, right?

14:55Listen to what I'm saying. Your training is important. Becoming the kind of guitar player who keeps getting better is important. We don't want to get down about this. And it's, it's, it's very simple. We don't need to get overwhelmed. We don't need to drink from the fire hose. If what I'm sharing today, it sounds like something that resonates with you. I want to invite you to become one of

15:25the founding members of this dojo. It's only open this week and I'll open it next year sometime. But for the public, this is the week. I think I'm going to next Wednesday is when it's going to close down. And then who's in there is in there. And we are going to have every Monday, these people are going to know exactly what to practice and why you're practicing it. Is it the specialty stuff? Can I read your mind and know what songs that you want to play? No, but I can help you organize your songs. There's, there's a, I've, I've created a whole section in there where you can list all of

15:59your songs and, and, uh, organize them by sets. And it will help you keep all the songs that you've been, it might, uh, you might get, um, it pick, it might pick one of the songs and it'll say, Hey, you can play this one in a while. Why don't you play the solo section or let's play this through this set of songs today. The first five songs you ever learned, or I have a set of songs that you haven't finished yet. You only know parts of, right? Pick one of them and finish it today, right? These are things that are going to pull you out of the rut and move you forward and develop

16:36you as a guitar player. You're going to learn how to measure your progress by development. And you can learn more about the, the dojo over play guitar academy.com. I've got a link for it down there. Uh, I just going to leave. I've been teaching guitar for a long time. I've been thinking about this question since I started podcasting. And today I'm happy to spend this time with you. Finally get to share this. This is what I've been wanting to do for a long time. I don't believe guitar players are losing because they don't have enough. I believe that they're losing because

17:10they don't have training. And so I'm trying to offer training to you. This is a better way to grow. And that's why I created it. And this week it's open. Uh, I believe it's time for a different way of learning guitar. And, uh, I would like to see you over there. In fact, I'm going to go over there and go live in about 20 minutes. We're going to hang out and go through all this stuff and go through the, uh, all the things people are sharing along as we're all learning things together. Okay. Thanks for spending time with me today. I'll see you soon.